Pensions

Lord Laird: To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Freud on 11 August (WA 429), how many current employees are members of (a) the National Health Service pension scheme; (b) the Armed Forces pension scheme; and (c) the Police pension scheme; and how many who are eligible to be members are not.

Lord Freud: The Department for Work and Pensions does not have policy responsibility for public service pension schemes and therefore does not hold the employee membership information for these schemes. HM Treasury has overall responsibility for public service pensions policy, but not for the administration and details of individual schemes: such data as requested may be held by the individual pension schemes.

Pensions

Lord Boswell of Aynho: To ask Her Majesty's Government what is their estimate of the savings likely to arise to public funds from changing the state pension age for men and women to 66 by April 2022 and either (a) 67 in 2025, or (b) 67 in April 2026; as compared with (1) the current timetable for pension age changes, and (2) that outlined under the timetable proposed in the Pensions Bill currently before Parliament.

Lord Freud: The estimated saving from raising state pension age to 66 by April 2022 and:
	(a) to 67 by 2025 compared with:
	the current timetable for pension age is £96.2 billion; and
	the timetable proposed in the Pensions Bill is £64.5 billion.
	(b) to 67 by 2026 compared with:
	the current timetable for pension age is £91.0 billion; and
	the timetable proposed in the Pensions Bill is £59.2 billion.
	Notes:
	1. The savings presented are computed in line with the methodology used to prepare the estimates of DWP AME savings published in the impact assessment presented with the Pensions Bill 2011. They take into account lower spending on pensioner benefits and higher spending on working age benefits and incorporate changes to long term assumptions following the publication of the Office for Budget Responsibility's July 2011 Fiscal Sustainability Report.
	2. The estimates are based on the current welfare system. Reliance on income-related pension benefits and working age benefits is assumed to remain in line with current age-specific rates of reliance.
	3. The estimates are based on the increases to 66 and 67 occurring over a two-year period.

Pensions

Lord Boswell of Aynho: To ask Her Majesty's Government what is their estimate of the savings likely to arise to public funds, as compared with the current pension timetable, from changing the state pension age (a) to 66 by April 2026, or (b) equalising the state pension age for men and women at 65 by April 2020 and then raising the state pension age to 66 in April 2022 and 67 by April 2026.

Lord Freud: (a) Changing state pension age to 66 by April 2026 is the same as the legislated baseline so no savings would be created.
	(b) Raising state pension age to 66 by April 2022 and to 67 by April 2026 would create estimated savings of £26.1 billion (in 2011-12 prices) between 2020-21 and 2025-26 and £64.9 billion (in 2011-12 prices) between 2026-27 and 2035-36 compared to the current pension timetable.
	This timetable would result in savings of just £1.1 billion (in 2011-12 prices) between 2016-17 and 2020-21. This is significantly lower than the savings of £11.1 billion (in 2011-12 prices) during the same period resulting from the Pensions Bill 2011 timetable.
	Notes:
	1. The savings estimates presented in this reply are computed in line with the methodology used to prepare the estimates of DWP AME savings published in the impact assessment presented with the Pensions Bill 2011. They take into account lower spending on pensioner benefits and higher spending on working age benefits and incorporate changes to long term assumptions following the publication of the Office for Budget Responsibility's July 2011 Fiscal Sustainability Report.
	2. The estimates presented in the reply are based on the current welfare system. Reliance on income-related pension benefits and working age benefits is assumed to remain in line with current age-specific rates of reliance.
	3. The estimates presented in the reply assume a baseline of the state pension age equalisation timetable as legislated by the Pensions Act 1995 and the increase to 66 and to 67 as legislated in the Pensions Act 2007.
	4. The estimates are based on the increases to 67 and 66 occurring over a two-year period starting April 2020 and ending April 2022 and starting April 2024 and ending April 2026 respectively.

South Sudan

The Earl of Sandwich: To ask Her Majesty's Government how much development assistance they gave directly to indigenous South Sudanese non-governmental organisations during 2009-10 and 2010-11; and for what activities.

Baroness Northover: Her Majesty's Government do not provide direct funding to South Sudanese non-governmental organisations. However we do fund three programmes that use South Sudanese non-governmental organisations to undertake peace-building activities or to dispense delivery of basic services. The three programmes are: the South Sudan Basic Services Fund, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) South Sudan Recovery Fund and the South Sudan Peace Building Programme.
	The BSF has served 20 per cent of the national population (about 2 million people) through BSF funded primary health care clinics and 21 out of 31 targeted new schools have been built and 30,008 students now enrolled. Over 670,000 people have benefited from safe drinking water and improved sanitation through BSF programmes.
	Since the inception of round 2 small grants mechanism, 69 local organisations have received grants and have been trained in project management and proposal writing (43 in agriculture, 16 in education and 10 in water and sanitation) funded by the UNDP. The grants have focused on grassroots or localised initiatives in agriculture, education and water and sanitation in all 10 states in South Sudan.
	Through the South Sudan Peace Fund approximately 5,494 people have participated in peace building and conflict mitigation activities such as dialogues, civic education courses and livelihoods support such as three pilot projects which work with demobilised women soldiers to assist their social reintegration in to host communities.
	These programmes disbursed £6.3 million in 2009-10 and £6.0 million in 2010-11 to South Sudanese non-governmental organisations.